II.
The Bal Masqué.
There was to be a Children's Fancy Dress Ball—a Bal Masqué, to which all Miss Melford's senior pupils were going, and little else was talked of weeks before the great event was due!
Margot was to go as Evangeline, and I was to be Priscilla the Puritan Maiden, but none of us knew in what character Maura Merle was to appear. It was kept secret.
Knowing the state of her finances, both Miss Melford and the girls offered to provide her costume, but she gratefully and firmly rejected both proposals, saying that she had made arrangements for a dress, and that it would be a surprise.
And indeed it was, for when we all assembled in the white drawing-room, in readiness for our escort to the Town Hall, Maura was what newspapers style "the cynosure of all eyes."
She wore a frock of pale blue silk! and all over it in golden letters were the words: "Sweets from Fairyland."
Her waving golden hair was adorned by a small, white satin, Trigon hat, ornamented with a blue band, on which were the words: "Fairy Queen."
From her waist depended an elaborate bonbonnière, her sash was dotted all over with imitation confections of various kinds, her blue satin shoes had rosettes of tiny bonbons, and her domino suggested chocolate cream.
There were of course loud exclamations of—"What does this mean, Maura?"
"Why, you are Fairy Queen, like the Fairyland Confectioner's Company's advertisements!" but all Maura said was: